1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for managing image forming apparatuses such as a printer, a copy machine and a multi-function machine using a network communication, and more particularly to control when processing results performed by a management server that remotely manages the image forming apparatus via a network are referred from the image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional maintenance system has been known in which a management server is placed on the Internet to remotely and collectively manage a client's image forming apparatus via a network. The conventional maintenance system, for example, collects maintenance information such as a status of the image forming apparatus and a number of prints based on a monitoring program of the image forming apparatus to manage the image forming apparatus.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-116671 discusses a conventional technique for displaying service maintenance information responding to error information issued by the image forming apparatus, on a user interface (UI) of the image forming apparatus. The service maintenance information which is acquired from the management server and responds to a specific trouble that occurs in the image forming apparatus is displayed on the UI of the image forming apparatus. With this technique, the maintenance of the image forming apparatus can be effectively improved.
Unlike Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-116671, even when the image forming apparatus does not get in trouble, it is desired that the maintenance information of the image forming apparatus managed by the management server can be freely acquired by the image forming apparatus.
The maintenance information of the image forming apparatus collected by the management server is conventionally provided to a Web site or a manager who manages the image forming apparatus in a report file form via a hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP).
A service company providing a maintenance service can monitor a status of the image forming apparatus, however, it has been difficult to acquire the information managed by the system from the UI of the image forming apparatus.
For example, in order to acquire the information managed by the management server based on an instruction from the UI of the image forming apparatus, a program needs to be mounted to directly acquire the maintenance information from the management server.
In such a case, for both of the management server and the image forming apparatus, function extension or firmware needs to be upgraded, resulting in increasing costs. Further, a method for mounting a browser in the image forming apparatus and browsing management information can be considered. However, since mounting of the browser depends on a specification of the image forming apparatus, the browser cannot be mounted in all image forming apparatuses.
Furthermore, in order to acquire the information managed by the management system of the image forming apparatus, it is necessary to perform various procedures, for example, entry of a uniform resource locator (URL), login authentication, and a search. Under limited circumstances such as a soft keyboard, which is a general interface of the image forming apparatus, such operations for performing the procedures are particularly difficult and thus acquiring the information is a troublesome work.